At the Speaker’s Conference yesterday, Nick Clegg delivered a frank assessment of the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party, calling it “woefully unrepresentative of modern Britain”. It’s not hard to see why. No ethnic minority MPs, and just nine female MPs among our 63 representatives. Woeful is the word.

The real question is: what to do about it? Nick has previously indicated – and repeated the point in his submission yesterday – that he would consider recommending all-women shortlists be adopted by the party after the next election if he’s unable to point to real progress in improving the Parliamentary party’s representativeness. David Cameron has caused apoplexy among some Tories with his suggestion that the positive discrimination of all-women shortlists might be the answer for his party, which is also ‘hideously male’.

So are all-women short-lists – or quotas for the number of women selected for seats – the way to address the issue? The party has, of course, been here before: in 2001, conference delegates rejected a controversial proposal for all-women shortlists, instead setting a target (not a quota) that 40% of candidates in winnable and held seats should be female.

Over to you, LDV’s readers, to decide how best the party can tackle the under-representation of women – if, indeed, you feel it is an issue which should be tackled. The question is simple: How should the Lib Dems increase their number of female MPs?

And your options are:

* All women shortlists and/or quotas in winnable and held seats
* All women shortlists and/or quotas in ALL seats
* No short-lists and/or quotas, but invest in getting more, better-trained and supported candidates
* No short-lists and/or: focus instead on electoral reform – until we have that, all our efforts will be limited.
* No short-lists and/or quotas for women – all candidates should stand or fall on their own merits regardless of gender

59 Comments

I cannot under any circumstances support an effort to make elections less representative, which is what this would be. If a gender imbalance (or any other imbalance) in MPs is really a problem (and I’m not winning to take it as given that it is), then the focus must be on two things:

1. The corresponding imbalance in the candidates who put their names forward for election
2. Why some of the candidates are systematically weaker than others, and what can be done to improve them

If the “wrong” people are getting elected, then the solution cannot be to rig the voting! I don’t see how liberals can even propose that.

All women shortlists are a lazy answer to a very complicated question. Much more impressive would be to change attitudes of party chairpeople and local party members. Often they don’t share the national consensus on ‘more women in politics’. Indeed, I recently had a debate with a female Lib Dem member who was arguing that women are totally not cut out for politics, have different talents from men and should stay as local councillors but not aspire to be anything else. This is an outdated attitude, and dare I say it, is often voiced by the more elderly men and women of our society.

While they continue to be in charge (mostly) of selections and interviews nothing will change. Nobody ever seems to address this problem (local parties stuck in the past) – instead the onus seems to be on new women candidates and making them feel guilty with all women shortlists. The problem is more complex. This answer plays into the hands of sexist local bigots – and I am 100% sure it will…

The present voting system discriminates against Liberal Democrats. We do not have “safe” seats to bestow upon people. We need the strongest and most dedicated candidates in order to win at all under FPTP.

With STV the voters could say – assuming one succesful Lib Dem candidate per constituency – whether they wanted that person to be male or female.

Meanwhile, we are stuck with FPTP. And the problem is – risking a gross generalisation – that most women are not prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to get themselves elected.

From experience it is necessary to invest time and attention and resources on attracting more women into Liberal Democrat community `activism’ that will include more polite requests to women to get involved, especially at a younger age i.e Sixth Form College.

We should remember that JS Mill went all all out to assuage prejudiced Victorians that women should be treated equally and become the recipients of the same voting rights as their male counterparts.He when an MP was ridiculed publically for his efforts and castigated by cartooning and verbally abused for campaigning for women`s suffrage .

One important lesson is for men to listen to women when they tell of what is their experience of attending public meetings and it is still not unusual for them to report that they were not asked to speak when indicating..

@John interesting that you pick the Lib Dem point rather than the female candidate point – from the point of view of female candidates it matters not a jot if Lib Dem candidates are still largely male.

@Cllr Patrick Smith – you are still looking at the issue the wrong way round – it ISN’T women’s fault – it’s not because of lack of female participation in politics that we don’t get selected – when we DO get involved we encounter discrimination – it’s like throwing money at a problem – if it doesn’t get spent wisely it’s pointless.

@Jo, one of the problems I think someone in your position faces is that there’s a touch of the silo mentality with local parties that means others won’t recognise your experience. In my case, I’ve been active in two constituencies and in neither case can I imagine the sort of conversation you describe happening (as I’m sure my current local party chair, council ward colleague and former PPC, all women, would agree!) I’ve no doubt that what you report happened, but we don’t seem to have any way for people in the local parties that are doing it right to reach into those that aren’t and sort it out.

Chairs should have to submit a long lengthy report to regional exec whenever they choose a male candidate where a female candidate was available to encourage them to really think about the impact of their decision – the process should be scrutinised much more…

I’m afraid I’ve become so bored with this debate over the years. It comes only second to the even more boring debate about why we don’t have enough ethnic minority candidates.

It’s very little to do with local parties, nearly all the fault of our selection procedures and methodologies, regional parties and the national party and the simple fact that we don’t have safe seats where an HQ can get away with ‘quota-matching’ parachuted candidates like our opponents.

@Martin Land I don’t understand what you mean about fault with the Lib Dem selection procedure – it’s recently been changed.

If you don’t think an issue is important then of course you will become bored. I’m bored f**king senseless with sending the same letter to my local paper about equal bloody pay but it gets sent nonetheless.

I agree totally with Matthew when he says:
“The real problem is that the PPC selection mechanism is biased in favour of certain characteristics which happen to occur more often in males.”

The last time I fought a PPC selection properly, I had a 6 year old child. Several members (and one of the other prospective candidates) told me that they thought it was inappropriate for a woman with young children to seek such a role.

@Sara That’s a sexist comment and you should be able to make a complaint! I’ve had all kinds of child-related comments directed at me even though I don’t intend to ever have children. “I want you to have my children” being one of them from someone who then went on to completely make it he was on the end of verbal abuse from me!

I’ve got to disagree with Martin when he blames the selection methodology. There’s nothing there that biases the system in favour or against any particular type of candidate. And if anyone can pick out any aspect that does discriminate, I’d love to know, especially as we’re still in the middle of rewriting them, with input from the Party’s Diversity Advisor. We’re even proposing to loosen the restrictions on the final members’ meeting, so that it need not be a classic ‘speech and questions’ (my gut feeling is that it favours a particularly narrow set of skills that don’t necessarily reflect those required to be a good candidate). The approval process is much improved, if reports are to be believed.

The question is, do we put barriers in the way of anyone, what are those barriers and can they be overcome? Some of them are in the heads of our members, as Sara notes. As a Returning Officer, I have been confronted by questions from members that I judged to be inappropriate. However, even when I reject them, the member is still thinking along those lines and short of testing every member for their political philosophy, I’m not sure that we can do much about it. Unfortunately, most people have their biases which they hold tight to.

The Party is consistent in its belief that it wants its representatives to reflect the wider society. It is also consistent in its belief that it opposes quotas and positive discrimination, as the poll currently demonstrates (48 to 5 against as I type). We don’t have equal numbers of male and female applicants for approval, and we can’t force people to apply, especially if they don’t want to. There are those who simply don’t want to be in the House of Commons because they don’t fancy dealing with the ‘rutting stag, testosterone-driven’ atmosphere.

We want results now, yet we aren’t willing to agree to the one thing that would achieve quick results so, what are we left with? Well, anything we do will have no impact until after the next General Election in any case, so we going to have to wait another four or five years to see any results regardless. And, unless someone proposes to deselect sitting MPs, those seats aren’t up for grabs, so we’ll need to select an unbalanced proportion of women for target seats that we will have to win.

My gut reaction is that the current CGB route, option three, is the only game in town. It won’t be quick, and that’s the problem. It is consistent with our liberal principles, but that is little consolation to those who want things to move rather faster…

This issue was discussed at the West Mids regional AGM last weekend by Ros Scott and resulted in some debate on the car journey home between myself and a fellow Lib Dem member.

We both agreed unanimously that there shouldn’t be all female selection lists, or launching female candidates into what may be considered “safe” seats (even if we have very few of them). This is, as far as I’m concerned, prejudice against candidates which may well serve a constituency for the better. Ultimately the best overall candidate should stand for the position – and overall across the whole of commons that should, statistically, work out somewhat representative of the entire population.

When looking at ethnic minorities – it wouldn’t make sense to parachute a black candidate into an area with 1% ethnic population purely based on their ethnicity if there are better candidates – all that does is create a candidate which local voters are unable to connect with on the same level.

The question in becomes more complex looking at the female equation as a roughly 50/50 split within a demographic would suggest candidates should even out.

I think the problem is the same with politics as it is within the business world – a very old system that is stacked massively in favour of the current system.

Based on this I’d chose option 3 from the above list – I’d like to see more time spent encouraging ethnic minorities and women to want to be PPCs in the first place. Whilst not actually being female it would seem from those I have spoken to that there is often a feeling that they won’t succeed as the system is stacked against them and there are also times that future political activists lack the confidence and self believe that they can succeed in a male-driven world.

If the party were to actively support minorities and work at developing their involvement in the party (as some mention – from a younger age in particular) then this will eventually filter through to parliament. It won’t happen overnight though and does require a combination of training, support networks and encouragement. Once someone has got far enough to be interested in applying to be a PPC though, they should be judged on their own merits against current candidates.

I am highly against positive prejudice in any form – it then causes a form of prejudice against the potentially equally capable white, middle-class, male candidates who have just as much right to be in parliament individually as any individual female/BEM candidate.

I believe we have a much larger base of ethnic minorities and female candidates at counsellor level – perhaps we should look at helping to develop these party activists in to PPCs – they’ve already got a big way in the party, so perhaps we should help them further?

I’d support option 3, with the proviso that what we need is better trained and supported candidates of both genders (and all races, by the way.) I can’t imagine any local party being happy to be told they were having an all-woman shortlist, even if on principle they agreed with it! I’m fundamentally opposed to all-women shortlists, firstly because I’m opposed to discrimination in any shape or form, but also because I agree with Anne Widdecombe (help!) when she points out that female MPs selected on that basis will be judged by their male peers (and probably many of their female peers) as only having got through because of the women-only shortlists and not on their talents.

I think the point that Martin was making is, as has been suggested before, that because of how politics is the qualities we tend to look for in candidates are usually (though not exclusively) found in men. It almost creates a catch-22 – in order to change the nature of politics we need more women to become involved, but they don’t or can’t because of the way politics is.

Interesting that you should choose to focus on the female/male MP split and rather casually bypass the fact that the Lib Dems have not got a single MP from an ethnic minority background – which brings more shame on Parliament than any all women shortlist ever could.

@KL – the Lib Dems already spent a great deal on supporting and training female candidates only for them to resign! No amount of training and support will counteract the snotty attitudes some people in authority have in the Lib Dems. The very fact that someone is a watered down conservative means they will have less sympathy than say Labour. However this takes the solution to the other extreme of all women shortlists.

KL
I think the point that Martin was making is, as has been suggested before, that because of how politics is the qualities we tend to look for in candidates are usually (though not exclusively) found in men.

Yes, that is also the point I was making. If our approval and selection procedures are essentially looking for those qualities, imposing all-women lists will not tackle the problem. It will just give a massive advantage to those small number of women who have the ‘rutting stag, testosterone-driven’ way of thinking and acting, while doing nothing at all for those of us, whether male or female, who don’t.

Whilst I also believe that two wrongs don’t make a right and that we shouldn’t now be discriminating against men to make up for the lack of women in parliament, I have one very strong reason why I hate the idea of all women shortlists. If you’re a man who has worked very hard to build up a constituency (and with Lib Dems, that commitment to taking on a seat that’s crap and turning it in to somewhere good is a vital skill in building up the party), it would be outrageous that they then couldn’t even stand for selection in that seat. Fine, if they stand and lose, but to not even allow them to apply would be a huge injustice.

It was said some years ago that the number of women who apply for approval, is the same as the percentage of women on the approved list, and the percentage of our selected candidates who are women. That percentage was about 30%. I notice in a debate on Conservative Home, they have 30% for all of these too. So, the most crucial thing we need to do is increase that percentage of women who apply to be approved in the first place.

I happen to agree that there are some candidates who are badly treated and Patrick Smith’s comment that “Why some local party selection committees and/or members systematically discriminate against certain candidates, and what can be done to change this.” resonates with a couple of selections I am aware of. These were nothing to do with being women, but just to do with unfair treatment.

One thing we have to do though is improve the support for all candidates, and make sure that candidates are not just abandoned when they are selected to succeed or fail on their own. We also need to look at what support (and I accept this involves raising many more funds) we give candidates to help them do well and to make sure they acquire the skills they don’t have (or we find another way of providing those skills if the PPC doesn’t have them).

Letters from a Tory – You’re right that the under-representation of women does get people more worked up, perhaps because it is more likely we will get all-women shortlists than all-black shortlists or all-Asian shortlists. I happen to think that the reason we have failed on this is because we have tended to represent areas with only small ethnic minority communities combined with a tradition of picking local candidates. That doesn’t excuse us now though, as we are less wedded to local candidates and tend to represent more diverse areas than we did. But we now have at least two target seats with ethnic minority candidates, and so I hope that will start to change at the next General Election.

Jo, I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make in the last bit of your post. I agree that, yes, there probably are some people with “snotty attitudes” to women in the Lib Dems, but then so there are in Labour, the Tories and the SNP too, and that sort of problem isn’t unique to politics. If selection committees or members reject a candidate because they disagree with their opinions – such as those of a “watered-down Conservative”, or because they support the war in Iraq, or disagree with PR – then all well and good. But to make a bold, sweeping statement that “equality is a dirty word in the Lib Dems” simply because someone disagrees with your views is just ridiculous.

The two most difficult things about being a candidates are time and money. If you’re a dad like me who actually likes spending time with your young family, then it can be pretty difficult having to spend four or five nights a week out knocking on doors. The general expectation by the party that a candidate “leads” and directs the campaign locally, rather than it being done by an agent or organiser (voluntary or paid), has meant that the time spent by PPCs trying to do things which other people can or should be doing has increased – and as a result the buck of responsibility can be too easily passed from the local party. It’s also meant that we’re in greater danger of developing PPCs who are great, fighting campaigners but maybe don’t necessarily have the people skills necessary as an MP (and which tend to be found more in women, I think.) Likewise, the simple expenditure – increased phone bills, petrol, postage, sometimes printing – can easily get out of hand, and again with a family (and no expenses) it can become difficult to justify.

I guess what I’m saying is that maybe we need to think more about making the PPC role more “family friendly” in a way which makes it easier for men and women to do, and also tries to take some of the aggressiveness out of it.

Not true, especially so if your wife/partner also works. But fundamentally there is a societal attitude that needs fixing (witness the reaction of men who are afraid to take paternity leave as they see it as career death).

The people (mainly men) who run companies and organisations tend to be very single-minded to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, including their families. Until that changes, then life in general won’t change. And the problem is that this system is self-replecating as by definition it is the single minded who get to the top.

Many years ago I went for approval as a LibDem Parliamentary candidate. I wasn’t planning to trawl round finding a seat, I just thought it might be useful to have that approval so I could step in and do it if my constituency needed me to do it.

The judgment from the approvers was essentially (though they didn’t phrase it quite this way) “You’re an introvert, we don’t want people of your personality type as PPCs”. I never bothered trying again. I very nearly left the party. At that time I had just been elected as a councillor, and so many of my constituents and people who knew me from elsewhere and didn’t know until then I was involved in politics were saying “You’re really good at this, why don’t you stand for Parliament?”. How was I supposed to reply to them? “Because the party of which I have been an active member for 15 years has just told me they don’t want people like me running for Parliament”?

Maybe it was also my working class accent. Or the stupid role-playing exercise they made us do where we were supposed to jump up and down cheering “rah rah rah for Paddy Ashdown” or something like that, which I don’t think I shone in.

Anyway, then I was young, free and single, now I’m none of these, so I can’t commit the time or sacrifice my paid career for it in the way that it seems to be deemed essential for a PPC in our party. So, there you are, maybe people are thinking “Thank God Huntbach never got to be a LibDem MP, given his views”. Or maybe I really am useless and don’t want to admit it. I think one might detect, however, a slight tone of bitterness in some of my comments re the party as a result of this.

The question that needs to be answered in this debate is: given the time commitment and resources required to win, the lack of financial and organisational support for most candidates and the unmeetable expectations of many local parties, why would a rational person of either sex take on the job?

Yes, there may well be discrimination against women from some areas, but if the proportion of selected women candidates is roughly the same as that on the approved list, then there must be other factors at play which explain why, for example, the efforts to encourage more, good, women to put themselves forward for approval have only yielded modest gains.

If we’ll failing to support selected candidates, whether men or women, and their local parties properly and to help them achieve their local goals… is that not the greater problem in terms of dissuading people to come forward?

Jo is spot on to pinpoint the issue of support AFTER selection. For me the final straw was being told by my region
when I was a PPC that ‘statutory rights did not apply’ when it came to maternity leave for PPCs.

I suppose the question is whether Lembit defines himself as such. I was born in Sweden to a Swedish father and English mother, so does that make me ethnic minority or perhaps even mixed race? I wouldn’t see myself as such and would never describe myself as being from an ethnic minority. On those grounds, Nick Clegg is also from an ethnic minority, and how many generations do you go back?

Essentially what I am saying is that all-women shortlists are unfair and are a lazy chocolate snack answer to a question requiring much more debate than we have had.

If employers had all-women shortlists there would be an uproar – if there were lists with all black candidates there would be uproar, if there was a list with just gay candidates there would be an uproar. It’s unfair and places the burden of guilt on women forever more as they will always be subject to the accusation ‘you’re only here because…’

I’m happy with questions of ethnicity being left to self-definition – in my case my Welshness peaks in the Spring with the 6 nations and my Englishness in the summer in the test matches 🙂

The problem arises if we were to prioritise potential ethnic minority candidates for selection and ended up with a shortlist of (very hypothetically!), Lembit, yourself and Mark Valladares people might question the procedure!

Candidate selection for electable places is extremely cut-throat and I can well beleive that people might try to take advantage of anything that would give them a better chance.

Jo – apologies if I misunderstood your position. I think it is a strong point that you make that there is already a great deal of support and training to get women selected only for them to resign later because of the attitudes they face.

@Hywel – the question of ethnicity is dazzlingly complicated! Does my Irish and British dual nationality and holding two passports make me an ethnic minority? Do I need more help because people may pick up on the fact that I’m half Irish? Also, as the BNP refuse to accept, the IS no such thing as a British National…only with the onset of industrialisation did we classify nations and impose borders. It’s meaningless.

The answer is no – race is much more openly able to be discriminated against. I do not talk with an Irish accent – though I’m sure I would be treated much differently if I did. It’s about perception and difference.

Matthew – it’s a great shame that you suffered that experience in the ppc approvals process: you’re just the sort of person we could do with in Parliament!

Thanks Alex, I wasn’t left feeling like that after the process, in fact I was left feeling like shit. If it wasn’t that I’d already been a long-standing member of the party, I’m sure I would either have dropped out or arranged to defect to another in public just to spite it. But, hey, who cares, I was white and male and there were plenty more of those.

I take issue with Jo Anklezarke that the questions of involving and motivating women proportionately to ignite their vital spark to move forward in Liberal Democrat community `activism’ and stand for Council or present for PPC is in fact dependant on a few important factors.

Many women may have heard Nick Clegg state at Conference that the target in the General Election was the approval of 150 female PPCs.So Jo Swinson leading on `Real Women’ policies should not be alone on the L/D benches for want of support in the next Parliament.

On Councils there are 34% L/D`s already elected and clearly there must be progressive Town Hall provision like crèches in the future, when more parenting role can be performed before,during and after Meetings for males as well.

There should be no barrier for the many L/D women supporters who seek to embark on confidence boosting taster or training sessions, as all women that have the potential for taking an active part in L/D community politics or those making the eventual decision to stand for election to PPC status, do not all start from the high self confidence.

Women should be encouraged to get involved from all backgrounds and a targeted training strategy will innevitably help women to determine their best role..

I don’t agree with you plan, but it’s not without merit. It wouldn’t make a great deal of difference at this election though, six Lib Dem MPs have said they’re standing down (all male) one of those constituencies has selected a man, four women and the last has yet to select. At the last election it means that Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, Dan Rodgerson and Martin Horwood would not have been elected in their current seats and neither would Susan Kramer. Assuming that all those seats were held with different candidates we’d have had an extra 3 women MPs last time and an extra 1 or 2 next time (once again assuming we hold all the seats). Whilst that would be a good increase it’s not a massive one.

– all constituencies returning a Lib Dem MP must select a candidate of the opposite sex, or of a different ethnic group, or with a physical disability upon the incumbent’s retirement

No, this is not “liberal”. Liberal means people are trusted and left to make their own decisions. It means a group of people coming together can choose who they want to represent them. The idea of some big state-level bosses coming down and saying “No, you have no right to pick the person you want, we will tell you who you must pick” is thoroughly illiberal.

As I have already suggested – and in the end I decided to make my point properly I had to reveal some personal information about myself which it was very uncomfortable to do – I think the small number of women MPs is a side-effect of some other bias in our system rather than a primary bias. Tackling the side-effect while ignoring the primary bias is a bad way to handle this.

“Liberal means people are trusted and left to make their own decisions.” I agree, Matthew Huntbach. I totally agree.

I think I need to sit down!

On the choices in the poll, I’m not sure that the last three mutually exclusive. Why could the party not invest in getting more, better-trained and supported candidates, focus on electoral reform and allow candidates to stand or fall on their own merits regardless of gender?

Option 5 – no all women shortlists or quotas: no hand-holding, it’s patronising.

But actively target the seats where good women candidates are indeed selected. If Lib Dems really want more women to win then put in the extra work and resources to help them win. What a pity the late Claire Brookes got very little help from outside the Skipton constituency. I did go and help her and I wish more people had done so. She missed winning b y a handful of votes.

All women shortlists don’t actually get them elected as Lib Dem MPs. That only applies if you’re a party which expects to achieve a fairly hefty majority in parliament at the next General Election. Whilst I like to remain optimistic there is such a thing as realism too.

Don’t vote for all women shortlists. Get over to action days and really make a difference. Deeds, not words.

What the hell does electoral reform have to do with the issue re your options for the poll?!! It’s because of our electoral system that women don’t get selected by local parties is it?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: There’s masses of evidence pointing to selectorate bias in single member seats, those making the selection want their candidate to look like a politician. They have a subconscious, and sometimes even conscious, bias in favour of white men in suits.

There’s also significant evidence pointing to multi-member seats encouraging parties to put forward a diverse slate of candidates, and also encouraging more underrepresented groups putting themselves forward. This can be clearly seen in the way UKIP went on about their minority candidates, in the way some New Zealand parties had to completely redo their candidate selection processes after electoral reform, etc.

Barbara Castle was selected as the second candidate in a two-member seat (Blackburn) for the ’45 election. She was told at the time they’d only let her, as a womean, be selected as the sitting-for-re-election male MP would look out for her and she had obvious talent. She was convinced abolishing multi-member seats put back female representation in Parliament substantially, and I agree with her.

Multi member STV is the best way of ensuring the HoC, including our MPs, is more representative of the country. I will not, ever, support shortlists that exclude people based on anything other than competence.

STV will solve the problem, and solve many other problems as well, it will force those recalcitrant anti-female older members to accept a variety of candidates, and that can only be a good thing.

I think the best solution I can think of is to require / recommend local party chairs or executives to attend diversity training at (regional) conference, which obviously requires making that training more widely available.

I’m involved in LGBT equality and the most rewarding training I had at Bournemouth last month (and there was a lot of excellent training) was Issan’s diversity training – talking about what diversity is, and what we are trying to achieve, and why it’s good for the party. And particularly why all-women shortlists isn’t good for equality!

I feel that having more people in local parties aware of why diversity is good for their local party might help challenge the subconscious, implicit sexism which seems to exist in a lot of local parties I’ve heard about – which might mean more women feeling welcome in local parties, more women getting involved with local party executives, and hence more women getting to the level where they’re fairly considered for selection as candidates.

“Liberal means people are trusted and left to make their own decisions.” I agree, Matthew Huntbach. I totally agree.

I think I need to sit down!

Why? This has always been the basis of my politics. It’s only your one-dimensional political mind which thinks just because I don’t support your right-wing economics means I must be some sort of nanny state socialist.

@ Jo Anglezarke
“Chairs should have to submit a long lengthy report to regional exec whenever they choose a male candidate where a female candidate was available to encourage them to really think about the impact of their decision – the process should be scrutinised much more”

Jo – I’m not clear on what you mean here. How would this lead to more scrutiny? As a chair of a local party (which ultimately selected two women PPCs), if my local party had voted for male candidates, what could I have possibly written? It wouldn’t have been my decision.
It seems to me that the only way for anyone to win as a Liberal Democrat is to make a massive personal sacrifice in terms of time, energy and money – and there are not terribly many people in the population generally willing to do this.

Jo, to my knowledge, Richard isn’t dealing with this thread, the LDV team divides moderating up and the author of the post if an editor keeps an eye on it. I other words, Stephen is watching this thread. In addition, Grammar Police is definitely not Richard, GP in fact used to be my borough chair and I know both separately, his reasons for pseudonymity are work related and perfectly legit.

I’ve been involved in several PPC selections, and have had many discussions with my PPC and the guy who came second about the local process–how can a Chair have any real influence on it when that would be a gross conflict of interest? I’ve never known a Chair get directly involved in a campaign for one or other PPC candidate, and I would be very upset if one did, GP’s point is sound, it’s not the role of a Chair to influence a selection contest, it’s the role of the Chair to ensure the selection process is fair and unbiased.

There are many many things that could be done to improve the process, many of them are being done, but getting the Chair to effectively take sides is not a good one, at all, and I think would require a reqrite of the constitution of virtually every local party.

You are right that there are some antediluvian attitudes in the party, as I’m sure there are in all the Parliamentary parties, but in my experience (we’re in the process of reselecting one of our borough PPCs after a resignation/defection) a lot of the resignations have nothing to do with gender discrimination, and everything to do with an excessive workload put onto PPCs, especially in smaller less hopeful seats. That definitely needs to change.

“It seems to me that the only way for anyone to win as a Liberal Democrat is to make a massive personal sacrifice in terms of time, energy and money – and there are not terribly many people in the population generally willing to do this.”

“Not willing”???

Come GP, I’ve been volunteering since I was 18 and I still do now-I don’t discriminate so whether you’re suffering from mental health issues to people from deprived backgrounds who don’t have ‘life skills’.

So when you use the term “not willing”, I go INSANE.

Change that. Change it to CAN’T.

The amount of energy this party wants people to give without rewarding them AT ALL is unbelievable.

But I’m luckier then most. I’ve always volunteered time, even if it didn’t profit my own agenda, like it does many people who volunteer for the party…so I don’t mind giving the time.

Anyhow, lack of financial resources means I wouldn’t even be able to THINK about being a PPC….

Matthew Huntbach – Liberal means people are trusted and left to make their own decisions

Matthew, I think we’re having this debate because of the outcome of the party being liberal and making its own decisions; and the outcome is deeply unsatisfactory.

But for me the fundamental point is there’s nothing liberal about bypassing talented women and Black people. The preference for the white middle class male is actually deeply conservative. The idea that we can continue to do things in the same old way, oblivious to how out of touch that makes the party look, without due care and attention to the future great Liberals we’re missing out on because they choose not to join a party that they do not believe will respect them, is quite reckless.

For years the real Conservatives made exactly the same point as Matthew about trusting the membership. Like the Lib Dems now, the result was the Tories had woefully few women and no Black MPs. And the result was that, certainly within Black communities, people who were generally Tory in instinct refused to join them. There was a public perception about what kind of party they really were.

That is now changing dramatically. Not only are the Tories set to elect at least ten new MPs of colour, and around 40 new women, but their general membership is changing too. I was blogging in Manchester and can report are large numbers of young talented BME members coming through. People our party have missed, simply failed to attract.

When you consider that Labour have been selecting new BME candidates as well, there is a real danger that after the next election if we do not make progress it is the Lib Dems whose brand will become even more tainted with the same unrepresentative image that the Tories suffered from for years. Quite simply, on representation we could become the new conservatives if we are not careful.

On top of that, the notion that we can present ourselves to the public as progressive on equality while not reflecting that in parliament is both hypocritical and unconvincing.

So faced with the reality of a changing Britain, are we going to use the badge of being liberal to defend the way we’ve always done things or are we going to say that liberal means being radical, campaigning for change because we believe something to be right, even to the point of being unpopular in the short term?

Guy Powell- When looking at ethnic minorities – it wouldn’t make sense to parachute a black candidate into an area with 1% ethnic population purely based on their ethnicity if there are better candidates – all that does is create a candidate which local voters are unable to connect with on the same level.

Guy, you couldn’t be more wrong. Don’t take my word for it, go speak to Ashok Kumar in Middlesborough, Adam Afriyie in Windsor, Parmjit Dhanda in Gloucester, and after the election Wilfred Emmanual Jones in Chippenham, Chi Onwurah in Newcastle, Priti Patel in Witham and Helen Grant in Maidstone. To say nothing of other MPs like Shailesh Vara who hardly represent seats with a high BME population. As far as I can see, these MPs and candidates are going down a treat where they are. If you told the voters in these areas they were “unable to connect with [the candidate] the same level” they’d probably punch you on the nose… and you’d deserve it!

These politicians wouldn’t have got selected before 1987 precisely because the parties argued there were “better local candidates”. There were always better local candidates… until you went to parliament to see who they were.

When Gordon Brown gave evidence at the Speakers Conference his suggestion that Labour will have “a majority” of shortlisted candidates from BME backgrounds in “relevant constituencies” was ridiculous on two levels. Firstly – as I’ve mentioned in response to Guy – some of the best BME candidates are in seats with a low BME population; but secondly, because this still allows local parties to select their favourite sons, who are more often than not council leaders who frequently disappear in the backbenches once elected.

Martin Land – I’m afraid I’ve become so bored with this debate [gender representation] over the years. It comes only second to the even more boring debate about why we don’t have enough ethnic minority candidates.

I’m not going to blast this comment out the water because I suspect that Martin Land simply hasn’t connected it to the wider issue of political reform. How we elect our MPs matters precisely because we want our democracy to be politically representative. If we can have a debate about voting systems, so should we debate selection systems. There are mixed views about primaries, but if nothing else this idea is perched midway between selection and election.

But ultimately its a debate not just about systems but about the nature of politics and political parties. Not just what a party is historically or philosophically, but where it will be in the future, how it will be seen, whether it really understands modern Britain. There are many issues in which an all-white, mostly-male Lib Dem party can indeed present policies that do just that. But there are others where it can’t. So if questions of representation are boring, just think electability.

The target for ensuring that at least 40% of all shortlists should be women is being ignored for various reasons. So according to the (mostly male) contributors of this link, we should do nothing – just more of the same – encouraging, training, blah blah.
Yes and in a 100 years we may have somewhere near approaching equal numbers of men and women representation in Parliament. How very radical and liberal.

The evidence I have seen does not show any sexism (or racism for that matter) in our selection prcess. In fact, women do very well when on the shortlist (I intend to post more fully about the latest stats on this shortly). It is true, though, that we do not have nearly enough women candidates on our list. Even if every single approved woman candidate were selected, we would not have 50% women candidates. By contrast, the number of our male candidates is enough to field a man in each seat and more.

This comment I think sums up the complacency in the party about this issue:
@Martin Land “It’s very little to do with local parties, nearly all the fault of our selection procedures and methodologies, regional parties and the national party”

Actually, it is hugely to do with local parties.

As a former chair of the Campaign for Gender Balance http://www.genderbalance.org.uk I am a fan of option three, however we can’t just leave it up to Ros, Vicky et al to sort this out alone.

Local parties have a crucial role to play in finding Parliamentary candidates, just as they do at Council level. We will not get anything like the number of women we need to have coming forward if local parties do not take some responsibility for encouraging women. Some do this brilliantly, but for most they think it is someone else’s job, put an ad for a PPC in Lib Dem News and wait to see who applies. Which ends up being mostly men.

Ideas for how to enthuse local parties to encourage diverse candidates welcomed on a postcard…

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